“Still Life” by Enrique Montenegro

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“Still Life” by Enrique Montenegro

About the Item

Enrique Montenegro Chilean, 1917-2003 “Still Life” Oil on canvas Signed & dated 1957 40 by 33 in. 41 by 34 in. Enrique Montenegro was recognized in the 1950’s as an important element of the American Modernist movement. In 1957, Montenegro was featured by Life Magazine, along with friend and colleague Richard Diebenkorn. The article introduced the American public to a new wave of abstraction emerging from the west that utilized the landscape and figure as points of departure. Montenegro sought to isolate and emphasize the figure, and investigate its relationship to its immediate environment and to the broader spectrum of the natural world. The exhibit, Enrique Montenegro: American Modernist, reveals a selection from a series Montenegro initiated at this time, and followed until the end of his life: a series of works in which Montenegro drew from a deep knowledge of abstraction to invent a new realism. Montenegro was known as a painter of forceful compositions driven by complex color schemes and lush, gutsy and virtuoso brushwork. In this series, parking lots, pedestrian footpaths, shopping centers and shallow interiors frame isolated figures intended to create a tension and drama that reflect the social and political climates of postwar America. To ignite the imagination, the artist inserts plains of color and texture alongside subtle passages of applied collage as well as compositional cinematographic complexities to lend a surreal anxiety to each piece. A New York Times reviewer of Montenegro's 1959 exhibit at the Parma Gallery, New York, wrote that Montenegro's semi-abstract figures and landscapes "owe their attractive and original character to the painter's sensuous feeling for the medium and color, both of which are richly exploited without becoming over-lavish. . . Slabs of color stand effective proxy for figures and still-life in semi-abstract paintings of odd, but genuine dramatic power." It wasn't, however, until he started to record the world around him that Montenegro's ability to know and to see became his calling card. ARTNews critic Sidney Illum, reviewing the same exhibit, wrote: "Montenegro inclines neither to Diebenkorn's obvious patterning nor to Olivera's melodramatic chic, but to a kind of sociability. Not only does he look longer and harder than the others, he paints more of what he sees." Enrique Montenegro was born in Valparaiso, Chile in 1917, and died in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 2003. He earned a BFA degree from The University of Florida in 1944, and continued his studies at the Art Students League in New York with Reginald Marsh and Morris Kantor in 1945. Montenegro was the recipient of the Catherwood Fellowship for study in Europe in 1956 and a grant from the Pollack/Krasner Foundation in 1999. One person exhibits include the Denver Art Museum, Landau Gallery-Los Angeles, Mount Holyoke Museum of Art, North Carolina Museum of Art, Parma Gallery-New York, The University of Florida Museum of Art, The University of Texas Art Museum, and the White Museum-San Antonio. Montenegro's paintings are in the permanent collections of the Lowe Art Museum, Miami, FL ; Mount Holyoke Museum of Art, Mount Holyoke, MA; North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC; and the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History, Albuquerque, NM. Provenance: Collection of Dr. Fred Olsen Olsen Foudation New Britain Museum of Art, New Britian CT. Le Trianon Fine Art & Antiques Art M57

Dimensions:
Height: 41 in (104.14 cm)Width: 34 in (86.36 cm)Depth: 2 in (5.08 cm)
Materials and Techniques:
Canvas
Period:
1950-1959
Date of Manufacture:
Circa 1957
Condition:
Excellent condition.
Seller Location:
Sheffield, MA
Reference Number:
Seller: Art M571stDibs: U1112168339639